Is the Annapolis summit crumbling?
I asked last week whether the upcoming Annapolis summit on the Middle East was doomed.
Carl in Jerusalem examines new signs that the Annapolis summit scheduled for next week is falling apart.
And there’s this: “No one seems to know what is happening.”
Israel Insider is also hearing the same.
There are protest rallies scheduled next week in Annapolis: Nov. 26, 27, 2007, in Annapolis at Gate 1, King George and Randall Sts. starting at 11 AM to 2 PM.
If pre-summit negotiations are any indication, this thing is going nowhere:
The chief negotiator for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday he would hold no more talks with his Israeli counterpart after a meeting on Saturday failed to make progress on a joint policy document.
Ahmed Qurie and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have led teams trying to draft a document to be presented at next week’s Middle East conference in Annapolis that would lay out how to resume negotiations on a Palestinian state. Qurie told Reuters he now expected no such joint document to be presented.
“The negotiations have come to an end without achieving the results we have been seeking,” Qurie said before Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert were due to meet to try to find ways to resolve differences over resuming peace talks.
Israel is doling out concessions–approving the release of 441 Palestinian prisoners:
The Israeli Cabinet on Monday approved the release of 441 Palestinian prisoners in a gesture to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but stopped short of U.S. demands to halt West Bank settlement construction before a crucial Mideast conference.
The Cabinet vote took place ahead of a meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas later in the day. The two men were trying to break a deadlock in preparations for the U.S.-hosted peace summit, which is expected to take place in Annapolis, Md., next week.
Israel sees the conference primarily as a ceremonial launching pad for new peace efforts, while the Palestinians want a more detailed plan for how post-conference talks will proceed.
Seeking to drum up support for the conference, Olmert is heading to Egypt on Tuesday for talks with President Hosni Mubarak, his office said. Arab League members are to decide on Friday whether they will join the gathering. High-level Arab attendance is seen as crucial to the success of nascent peace moves.
With the outcome of Annapolis uncertain, Israel has been under U.S. pressure to take steps, including a settlement freeze and a large-scale release of Palestinian prisoners, to bolster Abbas.
The Cabinet overwhelmingly approved Olmert’s proposal to release 441 prisoners. Although the release would be the largest in years, it fell short of Palestinian calls to free some 2,000 prisoners. Israel holds an estimated 9,000 Palestinian prisoners.
“We welcome the release of any prisoners,” said Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki. “But this is not enough. We will continue demanding the release of all prisoners.”
Meantime, Israel is on high alert:
The IDF is in a heightened state of alert ahead of the Annapolis summit next week, out of fear that Hamas and Islamic Jihad will try to perpetrate a large-scale terror attack to derail the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, defense officials said Sunday.
The officials said there were currently 10 specific warnings concerning Palestinian plans to launch a terror attack before the summit.
The officials said that while there was no concrete intelligence that the warnings were connected to the peace summit, which is scheduled to be held at the Annapolis Naval Academy next Monday, the assumption was that terror groups - particularly Islamic Jihad and Hamas - would try to perpetrate an attack to spoil the peace efforts.
“There is a concerted effort today by Hamas and other terror groups to derail the talks,” a defense official said. “One of the ways to do that is to carry out a large-scale attack inside Israel.”
Same old, same old.
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As long as Isreal keeps giving more concessions the “Palestinians” will keep up with the garbage. More bulldozers, less talk.
Imagine if this were America vs. Taliban negotiations…
Now, apply that to Israel.
Appeasement has dismal results as a diplomatic tool. Especially when one of the parties you are dealing with has a proven track record of failing to comply with any prior agreement.
The fact of the matter is that the Arab world does not care about the Palestinians. They use they as a propaganda tool to foment anti-Israeli sentiment. Period.
And making concessions to terrorists is a very misguided strategy. It only serves to ratify what they have done in the past, and embolden them to engage in even more henious tactics in the future.
Looks like Condi took her meeting with Carter to heart. Jimmy Carter is the patron saint of terrorists everywhere. I hope that Rice will wake up and realize that these people she is dealing with are not “freedom fighters”. Far from it - they are anti-freedom fighters.
I have to disagree with this. Sometimes bending over backwards even though your opposite isn’t even trying is a good thing. When all the concessions that can be made have been made and there is still no solution, Israel can proceed to protect herself with a clear conscience. I personally like the “nuke ‘em till they glow, shoot ‘em in the dark” solution.
With the conference looming, Defense Minister Ehud Barak has been noticeably tight-lipped over his military options other than to place his forces on alert.
Isreal needs to hold the LINE!!!!
Terror: Just Say NO
Do you sing that to the tune of “…all we are saying is give nukes a chance…”?
Is anyone else nervous about this “summit” be held on American soil in an historic area? Personally, I’m afraid something might get blown up. A better location for this would be at an insane asylum.
Insanity is often defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. QED.
Michelle Malkin always makes the most convincing arguments and today is no exception. We can expect the Annapolis conference to be as unsuccessful as Clinton’s disastrous Camp David conference in 2000. Yasser Arafat arrived at Camp David planning to make no concessions yet knowing that the MSM would inevitably brand Israel as “intransigent” and knowing that he would start a series of riots and violence when he returned to the West Bank and escape any blame. Indeed, after the failure of the 2000 Camp David conference, the New York Times allowed Deborah Sontag, a left wing reporter at the Times, to write a huge front page “investigative piece” in which she concluded that Arafat was blameless and Israel was responsible for the breakdown in talks and that Clinton should have been more understanding of Arafat’s “needs”. The State Department careerists are always talking about what Abbas or Hezbollah or Assad “needs”. These State Department types are very much like Neville Chamberlain and the British foreign service at Munich 1938.
Michelle Malkin is the best in the biz!
The State Department. Fire the whole lot, and put a Marine Corp General in charge. Give him orders, and sit back to watch the work get completed.
Instead, what do we have? It appears to me to be a bunch of pink panty wearing New World Order types from the CFR hand holding, and song singing.
I don’t know how Bush and Rice became so deluded - but apparently they’ve gone beyond ’smoking something’ - they’ve not only badly embarrassed themselves, they’ve seriously endangered Israel, Lebanon and the US.